CAMDEN, S. C. — It is a comfort to turn from small
political jealousies to our grand battles — to Lee and Kirby Smith after
Council and Convention squabbles. Lee has proved to be all that my husband
prophesied of him when he was so unpopular and when Joe Johnston was the great
god of war. The very sound of the word convention or council is wearisome. Not
that I am quite ready for Richmond yet. We must look after home and plantation
affairs, which we have sadly neglected. Heaven help my husband through the deep
waters
The wedding of Miss Aiken, daughter of Governor Aiken, the
largest slave-owner in South Carolina; Julia Rutledge, one of the bridesmaids;
the place Flat Rock. We could not for a while imagine what Julia would do for a
dress. My sister Kate remembered some muslin she had in the house for curtains,
bought before the war, and laid aside as not needed now. The stuff was white
and thin, a little coarse, but then we covered it with no end of beautiful
lace. It made a charming dress, and how altogether lovely Julia looked in it!
The night of the wedding it stormed as if the world were coming to an end — wind,
rain, thunder, and lightning in an unlimited supply around the mountain
cottage.
The bride had a duchesse dressing-table, muslin and
lace; not one of the shifts of honest, war-driven poverty, but a millionaire's
attempt at appearing economical, in the idea that that style was in better
taste as placing the family more on the same plane with their less comfortable
compatriots. A candle was left too near this light drapery and it took fire. Outside
was lightning enough to fire the world; inside, the bridal chamber was ablaze,
and there was wind enough to blow the house down the mountainside.
The English maid behaved heroically, and, with the aid of
Mrs. Aiken's and Mrs. Mat Singleton's servants, put the fire out without
disturbing the marriage ceremony, then being performed below. Everything in the
bridal chamber was burned up except the bed, and that was a mass of cinders,
soot, and flakes of charred and blackened wood.
At Kingsville I caught a glimpse of our army. Longstreet's
corps was going West. God bless the gallant fellows! Not one man was
intoxicated; not one rude word did I hear. It was a strange sight — one part of
it. There were miles, apparently, of platform cars, soldiers rolled in their
blankets, lying in rows, heads all covered, fast asleep. In their gray
blankets, packed in regular order, they looked like swathed mummies. One man
near where I sat was writing on his knee. He used his cap for a desk and he was
seated on a rail. I watched him, wondering to whom that letter was to go — home,
no doubt. Sore hearts for him there.
A feeling of awful depression laid hold of me. All these
fine fellows were going to kill or be killed. Why? And a phrase got to beating
about my head like an old song, “The Unreturning Brave.” When a knot of boyish,
laughing, young creatures passed me, a queer thrill of sympathy shook me. Ah, I
know how your home-folks feel, poor children! Once, last winter, persons came
to us in Camden with such strange stories of Captain ——, Morgan's man; stories
of his father, too; turf tales and murder, or, at least, how he killed people.
He had been a tremendous favorite with my husband, who brought him in once,
leading him by the hand. Afterward he said to me, “With these girls in the house
we must be more cautious.” I agreed to be coldly polite to ——. “After all,” I
said, “I barely know him.”
When he called afterward in Richmond I was very glad to see
him, utterly forgetting that he was under a ban. We had a long, confidential
talk. He told me of his wife and children; of his army career, and told Morgan
stories. He grew more and more cordial and so did I. He thanked me for the kind
reception given him in that house; told me I was a true friend of his, and related
to me a scrape he was in which, if divulged, would ruin him, although he was
innocent; but time would clear all things. He begged me not to repeat anything
he had told me of his affairs, not even to Colonel Chesnut; which I promised
promptly, and then he went away. I sat poking the fire thinking what a
curiously interesting creature he was, this famous Captain, when the
folding-doors slowly opened and Colonel Chesnut appeared. He had come home two
hours ago from the War Office with a headache, and had been lying on the sofa
behind that folding-door listening for mortal hours.
“So, this is your style of being ‘coldly polite,’” he said.
Fancy my feelings. “Indeed, I had forgotten all about what they had said of
him. The lies they told of him never once crossed my mind. He is a great deal
cleverer, and, I dare say, just as good as those who malign him.”
Mattie Reedy (I knew her as a handsome girl in Washington
several years ago) got tired of hearing Federals abusing John Morgan. One day
they were worse than ever in their abuse and she grew restive. By way of
putting a mark against the name of so rude a girl, the Yankee officer said, “What
is your name?” “Write ‘Mattie Reedy’ now, but by the grace of God one day I
hope to call myself the wife of John Morgan.” She did not know Morgan, but
Morgan eventually heard the story; a good joke it was said to be. But he made
it a point to find her out; and, as she was as pretty as she was patriotic, by
the grace of God, she is now Mrs. Morgan! These timid Southern women under the
guns can be brave enough.
Aunt Charlotte has told a story of my dear mother. They were
up at Shelby, Ala., a white man's country, where negroes are not wanted. The
ladies had with them several negroes belonging to my uncle at whose house they
were staying in the owner's absence. One negro man who had married and dwelt in
a cabin was for some cause particularly obnoxious to the neighborhood. My aunt
and my mother, old-fashioned ladies, shrinking from everything outside their
own door, knew nothing of all this. They occupied rooms on opposite sides of an
open passage-way. Underneath, the house was open and unfinished. Suddenly, one
night, my aunt heard a terrible noise — apparently as of a man running for his
life, pursued by men and dogs, shouting, hallooing, barking. She had only time
to lock herself in. Utterly cut off from her sister, she sat down, dumb with
terror, when there began loud knocking at the door, with men swearing, dogs
tearing round, sniffing, racing in and out of the passage and barking
underneath the house like mad. Aunt Charlotte was sure she heard the panting of
a negro as he ran into the house a few minutes before. What could have become
of him? Where could he have hidden? The men shook the doors and windows, loudly
threatening vengeance. My aunt pitied her feeble sister, cut off in the room
across the passage. This fright might kill her!
The cursing and shouting continued unabated. A man's voice,
in harshest accents, made itself heard above all: “Leave my house, you rascals!”
said the voice. “If you are not gone in two seconds, I'll shoot!” There was a
dead silence except for the noise of the dogs. Quickly the men slipped away.
Once out of gunshot, they began to call their dogs. After it was all over my
aunt crept across the passage. “Sister, what man was it scared them away?” My
mother laughed aloud in her triumph, “I am the man,” she said.
“But where is John?” Out crept John from a corner of the
room, where my mother had thrown some rubbish over him. “Lawd bless you, Miss
Mary opened de do' for me and dey was right behind runnin' me —“ Aunt says
mother was awfully proud of her prowess. And she showed some moral courage,
too!
At the President's in Richmond once, General Lee was there,
and Constance and Hetty Cary came in; also Miss Sanders and others. Constance
Cary1 was telling some war anecdotes, among them one of an attempt
to get up a supper the night before at some high and mighty F. F. V.'s house,
and of how several gentlefolks went into the kitchen to prepare something to
eat by the light of one forlorn candle. One of the men in the party, not being
of a useful temperament, turned up a tub and sat down upon it. Custis Lee,
wishing also to rest, found nothing upon which to sit but a gridiron.
One remembrance I kept of the evening at the President's:
General Lee bowing over the beautiful Miss Cary's hands in the passage outside.
Miss ––– rose to have her part in the picture, and asked Mr. Davis to walk with
her into the adjoining drawing-room. He seemed surprised, but rose stiffly,
and, with a scowling brow, was led off. As they passed where Mrs. Davis sat,
Miss –––, with all sail set, looked back and said: “Don't be jealous, Mrs.
Davis; I have an important communication to make to the President.” Mrs. Davis's
amusement resulted in a significant “Now! Did you ever?'”
During Stoneman's raid, on a Sunday I was in Mrs. Randolph's
pew. The battle of Chancellorsville was
also raging. The rattling of ammunition wagons, the tramp of soldiers, the
everlasting slamming of those iron gates of the Capitol Square just opposite
the church, made it hard to attend to the service.
Then began a scene calculated to make the stoutest heart
quail. The sexton would walk quietly up the aisle to deliver messages to
worshipers whose relatives had been brought in wounded, dying, or dead.
Pale-faced people would then follow him out. Finally, the Rev. Mr. Minnegerode
bent across the chancel-rail to the sexton for a few minutes, whispered with
the sexton, and then disappeared. The assistant clergyman resumed the communion
which Mr. Minnegerode had been administering. At the church door stood Mrs.
Minnegerode, as tragically wretched and as wild-looking as ever Mrs. Siddons
was. She managed to say to her husband, “Your son is at the station, dead!”
When these agonized parents reached the station, however, it proved to be some
one else's son who was dead — but a son all the same. Pale and wan came Mr.
Minnegerode back to his place within the altar rails. After the sacred
communion was over, some one asked him what it all meant, and he said: “Oh, it
was not my son who was killed, but it came so near it aches me yet!”
At home I found L. Q. Washington, who stayed to dinner. I
saw that he and my husband were intently preoccupied by some event which they
did not see fit to communicate to me. Immediately after dinner my husband lent
Mr. Washington one of his horses and they rode off together. I betook myself to
my kind neighbors, the Pattons, for information. There I found Colonel Patton
had gone, too. Mrs. Patton, however, knew all about the trouble. She said there
was a raiding party within forty miles of us and no troops were in Richmond!
They asked me to stay to tea — those kind ladies — and in some way we might
learn what was going on. After tea we went out to the Capitol Square, Lawrence
and three men-servants going along to protect us. They seemed to be mustering
in citizens by the thousands. Company after company was being formed; then
battalions, and then regiments. It was a wonderful sight to us, peering through
the iron railing, watching them fall into ranks.
Then we went to the President's, finding the family at
supper. We sat on the white marble steps, and General Elzey told me exactly how
things stood and of our immediate danger. Pickets were coming in. Men were
spurring to and from the door as fast as they could ride, bringing and carrying
messages and orders. Calmly General Elzey discoursed upon our present weakness
and our chances for aid. After a while Mrs. Davis came out and embraced me
silently.
“It is dreadful,” I said. “The enemy is within forty miles
of us — only forty!” “Who told you that tale?” said she, “They are within three
miles of Richmond!” I went down on my knees like a stone. “You had better be
quiet,” she said, “The President is ill. Women and children must not add to the
trouble.” She asked me to stay all night, which I was thankful to do.
We sat up. Officers were coming and going; and we gave them
what refreshment we could from a side table, kept constantly replenished.
Finally, in the excitement, the constant state of activity and change of
persons, we forgot the danger. Officers told us jolly stories and seemed in
fine spirits, so we gradually took heart. There was not a moment's rest for any
one. Mrs. Davis said something more amusing than ever: “We look like frightened
women and children, don't we?”
Early next morning the President came down. He was still
feeble and pale from illness. Custis Lee and my husband loaded their pistols,
and the President drove off in Dr. Garnett's carriage, my husband and Custis
Lee on horseback alongside him. By eight o'clock the troops from Petersburg
came in, and the danger was over. The authorities will never strip Richmond of
troops again. We had a narrow squeeze for it, but we escaped. It was a terrible
night, although we made the best of it.
I was walking on Franklin Street when I met my husband. “Come
with me to the War Office for a few minutes,” said he, “and then I will go home
with you.” What could I do but go? He took me up a dark stairway, and then down
a long, dark corridor, and he left me sitting in a window, saying he “would not
be gone a second”; he was obliged to go into the Secretary of War's room. There
I sat mortal hours. Men came to light the gas. From the first I put down my
veil so that nobody might know me. Numbers of persons passed that I knew, but I
scarcely felt respectable seated up there in that odd way, so I said not a word
but looked out of the window. Judge Campbell slowly walked up and down with his
hands behind his back — the saddest face I ever saw. He had jumped down in his
patriotism from Judge of the Supreme Court, U. S. A., to be under-secretary of
something or other — I do not know what — C. S. A. No wonder he was out of
spirits that night!
Finally Judge Ould came; him I called, and he joined me at
once, in no little amazement to find me there, and stayed with me until James
Chesnut appeared. In point of fact, I sent him to look up that stray member of
my family.
When my husband came he said: “Oh, Mr. Seddon and I got into
an argument, and time slipped away! The truth is, I utterly forgot you were
here.” When we were once more out in the street, he began: “Now, don't scold
me, for there is bad news. Pemberton has been fighting the Yankees by brigades,
and he has been beaten every time; and now Vicksburg must go!” I suppose that
was his side of the argument with Seddon.
Once again I visited the War Office. I went with Mrs. Ould
to see her husband at his office. We wanted to arrange a party on the river on
the flag-of-truce boat, and to visit those beautiful places, Claremont and
Brandon. My husband got into one of his “too careful” fits; said there was risk
in it; and so he upset all our plans. Then I was to go up to John Rutherford's
by the canal-boat. That, too, he vetoed “too risky,” as if anybody was going to
trouble us!
_______________
1 Miss Constance Cary afterward married Burton
Harrison and settled in New York where she became prominent socially and
achieved reputation as a novelist.
SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 240-8
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